








The World Health Organization
(W.H.O.) has cited the Philippines as the largest exporter of Nurses to
foreign countries.
Filipino nurses can be found everywhere around the world -- in the big
cities of United States and Ireland, in urbanized centers of Europe and
Asia, in the far corners of Africa and South America, in remote desert
clinics and state-of-the-art hospitals in the Middle East.
There are an estimated 786,000
Filipino Nurses working outside the Philippines, in about 116 countries
.
As of 2005, there are 1,789
nursing schools in the Philippines. They graduated more than 386,920
nurse-students that year. In 2005, 40,951 passed the two Board
exams (June and December 2005). The number of these new
nurses exceed the country’s nurse requirements. The excess number
of nurses go overseas for work.
Part of the reason for such
popularity is the proficiency of the Filipino Nurse in the English
language, today’s lingua franca of hospitals worldwide. The educational
system for nurses in the Philippines mandates English as the medium of
instruction. Moreover, the training of nurses features
apprenticeship, laboratory work, experiments, residency and
community-based projects --- all lectures and school work being done in
English.
By the
time the Filipino nurse finish her nursing degree, she would have spent at
least 10 years in school, being taught most of her subjects in the
English language, instead of the local language. The fluency in English
results in adaptability and shorter training period. Overseas employment
for a Filipino Registered Nurse is not considered unusual but it
regarded as an enrichment of professional experience.